Show me an example Israel Real Estate News: July 2009

Thursday, July 30, 2009

June sees 57% spike in realty sales

The real estate market experienced a positive trend in June, as realty sales showed a 57% rise in sales, compared with June of 2008.

Some 1,540 new apartments were sold in June, all in privately-held construction projects, the Central Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday.

CBS data indicated that 44% of all new apartments sold during the first half of 2009 were in central Israel, and 23% in the greater Tel Aviv area.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

'Israel is on the right track'

Faced by increasing numbers of positive economic indicators, analysts are starting to agree that Israel's economy has bottomed out.

"We're on the right track. We may have even passed the turning point," said Ayelet Nir, chief economist of Tel Aviv brokerage IBI, yesterday.

A year ago a statement like that would have evoked a bitter snort. Yet less than a year after Lehman Bros. collapsed with a roar heard around the world, macro analysts are smiling anew. Gil Bufman, chief economist of Bank Leumi,

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Haifa real estate prices quintuple

"Prices in Haifa are now sky-high. The lower city is attracting young, highly educated people. We're positioning the city as one of Israel's key university towns," says Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav.

Yona adds, "We're that now redeveloping the entire lower city into a university campus, prices have soared 500-600%. In a city with breathtaking vistas, green mountains, and spacious beaches, it is areas in the lower city near the sea where prices are lowest, a tenth of the price of a seafront apartment in central Israel. Although the Haifa real estate market is recovering, most people in central Israel only consider the city as a place to buy apartments for investment. Prices are a ridiculously low NIS 200,000-400,000 in the cheaper neighborhoods, and are definitely not purchased to meet the buyers' needs.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

A THREE-BEDROOM DUPLEX IN A BAUHAUS BUILDING

In recent years Tel Aviv’s real estate values have risen slowly and steadily. In 2003, the average price of an apartment was 896,100 shekels ($226,374); in 2008, it was 1,205,400 shekels ($304,509), according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, a government agency.

The economic downturn has slowed the market. By the middle of 2008, “the market froze,” Yoram Indik, a Tel Aviv-based real-estate broker, said. “People didn’t want to sell, buyers didn’t want to buy.”

But even though the pace of sales has slowed, housing prices are generally still on the rise. For the first quarter of 2009, the average price of an apartment was 1,283,000 shekels ($324,113) according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.